05 April, 2013

This is the true story of Meik-hti-lar incident between Burmese Buddhists and Bengali Muslims there.

Today March 20 at about 9 in the morning U Khin Maung Win and Daw Aye Aye Naing came to New Weint Sein gold shop (Muslim-owned) to sell their gold comb. The husband and wife U Khin Maung Win (46) and Daw Aye Aye Naing (45) were together with their two young children.

The Shop-owner Muslim woman Myint Myint Aye (a) She-tar then broke the gold comb into two pieces and rubbed both pieces on their grading stone and also applied acid on them. She then decided to offer only 50,000 kyats for the gold worth at least 100,000 kyats.

The Buddhist couple refused to sell at that low price and asked her to re-join two broken pieces together. The Muslim woman refused and told them to leave and a heated argument broke out. They finally came to blow after the Benmgali-Muslim shop-owner and her elder sister bitch slapped the Burmese-Buddhist couple.
Daw Aye Aye Naing then started yelling out to the Burmese bystanders for help. Meanwhile the Bengali-Muslim husband of the shop-owner Htun Htun Oo (a) Ar-shit and his employee Nyi Nyi came in and started hitting U Khin Maung Win with timber 2x4 pieces. They both were yelling out that the Burmese-Buddhist couple and their children were trying to rob their gold shop.

As their Muslim relatives from other Muslim gold shops nearby joined the brutal attack on the Burmese-Buddhist family the bystanders started shouting at them to stop such unjust violence and they then called the police.

About twenty minutes later policemen arrived and they closed New Weint Sein Muslim gold shop and arrested Htun Htun Oo (a) Ar-shit and Nyi Nyi. But their accomplice Muslim women Myint Mtyint Aye (a) She-tar, Netty, and Boat-pwa escaped through the rear entrance of their shop.

By then time was about 10 in the morning and the Burmese crowd there was only about fifty. People thought that the escaping Muslim women were hiding in the upstairs apartment of Taw-win Yadanar Muslim gold shop next door. So they told police and the policemen went up there.

They found no Muslim women they were looking there except two teenage Muslim girls ferafully hiding there from the gathering Burmese crowd. Police and some local Buddhists then escorted them to safety through the angry crowd. Some Burmese threw stones at them but nothing serious happened to them as both Bengali-Muslim girls were wearing motorcycle helmets as precautions.

When the police and their charges got back at the police station there were big crowd of Burmese Buddhists waiting there. Requested by the district administrator and district police chief the town elders asked the crowd to disperse and at about 11 in the morning the crowd left the police station.

But the crowd at the New Weint Sein gold shop were getting bigger by the hour without a heavy police presence there and at about 1 in the afternoon the crowd turned violent and started destroying the New Weint-Sein gold shop and other Muslim gold shops in the area.

Burmese-owned Taing Chit gold shop was partly destroyed also as it was too late when the Buddhist mob discovered the Buddhist statue and Buddhist flag left inside the shop by the fleeing Buddhist owners.

By then about thirty riot police arrived at the scene but they just watched the destruction as a group of Buddhist monks also arrived and made an understanding with the police that they would control the Buddhist crowd not to target other Muslim properties in the town except the Muslim gold shops they had already started destroying.

As a precaution police detachments were sent to the mosques all over town and policemen with shields and bamboo sticks stood guard right in front of every mosque in Meik-hti-lar.

A Buddhist monk was killed by Muslims and deadly riots spread

Unfortunately at that time a Buddhist monk from Hanzar village of One-dwin township had come into the Meik-hti-lar town as a passenger on a motorbike and they were unknowingly riding through the Da-hart-tan Muslim ward the biggest Muslim quarters in Meik-hti-lar.

Already-agitated Muslims saw the Buddhist monk and chased the motorbike and managed to strike the Buddhist monk from behind with a sword and he fell to the ground from his pillion-riding position on the motorbike. He had a long deep gash on back of his head just above his left ear.

Despite the desperate pleas for mercy from the rider the Muslims forcefully took off his robe and brutally dragged the direly-wounded Buddhist monk into the nearby Myo-ma Mosque. Once inside the mosque they poured acid and petrol all over the wounded Buddhist monk and burned him alive. Only his discarded-robe and a large pool of blood were left at the spot on the road where he fell off the motor bike wounded.

Once that tragic news reached the crowd at the gold shops they immediately marched to Da-hart-tan Muslim ward and burned down the said Myo-ma Mosque and the nearby Muslim houses.

Muslims there retaliated by burning the Burmese houses and striking back at the attacking Buddhist mob. As Muslims were more numerous there many Buddhists were killed and wounded in that Muslim ward.

There are now 16 wounded Buddhists in the Meik-hti-lar Hospital and three were almost fatally wounded. So far one Burmese Buddhist died at the hospital and a few burnt-out corpses of unknown race have been recovered from the Muslim ward by the police.

During the riots a Muslim man driving a ten-wheeler truck tried to run over Burmese mob but he was hit in the eyes by Buddhists’ sling-shot balls and he lost control of his truck which was stopped after hitting a concrete building. He was pulled down from the truck and the Buddhist mob burned him alive.

The race riots were going on strong till 10 in the night when the district administration has imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew (Act-144) indefinitely and the armed-riot-police battalions finally took over the whole town of Meik-hti-lar.

By 10:30 in the night all the mosques in Meik-hti-lar were burning and the local Muslims have taken all their young children, their women, and their old people out of the town in a long convoy of cars and trucks seen heading towards Taunggyi in the East. Only some Muslim men are left in the town to guard their properties.

Muslim population of Meik-hti-lar has dangerously swelled to the alarming level recently as the restless Muslim refugees fleeing from the recent racio-religious riots and unrests in Kyak-pa-daung, Kyauk-se, Ya-me-thin, and Taung-ngu and other places all over Burma had gathered at Meik-hti-lar the middle junction of various highways in Burma.

(Translator's Notes: Meik-hti-lar is the epicenter of Buddhist heartland in middle Burma. I used to know the area very well as my paternal clan is from Ma-hlaing a large township just a few miles north-west of Meik-hti-lar. The completely-Burmese area back then was basically the cradle of extremely brutal civil war between the ruling Socialists and the rebelling Communists in the whole 1950s.

Back then my late father Bo Htun Hla - an ex-army officer from Japanese-trained BNA (Burma National Army) and one of few trusted lieutenants of late General Aung San - was the Divisional Commanding Officer of 5,000 strong Communist 3M (Ma-thone-lone) Division controlling the triangular area of Mandalay-Meikhtilar-Myingyan during late 1940s and early 1950s.

Of course the Burmese Communists (CPB) were defeated there by the then-Socialists-controlled Burmese Army together with various Buddhist militias financed and armed by U Nu - Kyaw Nyein Socialist government.

Burmese there are most brutally militant compared to other Burmese anywhere else in Burma. In addition to the traditional weapons like long swords (Nghet-kyee-daung Dah) and long spears (Hlan-shay) openly carried by most men, most villages there has a cache of British Lee-Enfield .303 rifles secretly buried in the village ground. And the youths from that area are the main lifeblood of Burmese army which recruits only the Buddhist Burmese.

There were hardly any Muslims in that area before the 1970s. It seems now that within less than 40 years the invading Bengali-Muslims with massive financial support from Saudi Arabia have become the commercially dominant group building mosques and madrassas all over the place and the native Burmese-Buddhists must have deeply resented them and the eventual result is this racio-religious riots and the Muslim-cleansing which will follow like in the recent Arakan riots.)

30 November, 2012

BREAKIING-
On 29th November, 2012, at 8AM, 30th Street, between 77 & 74 Street, National Hospital of Mandaly. There are victim from Monywa District, Salingyi Township, Labadan Hill Bronz Mining, the horrifying moment the protesters were allegedly brutally crushed by Water Compressors, Tears Bombs, Phosphorus Bombs and set fires on them. The demonstrator had apparently resisted a gov relocation when they appeared to be crushed by weapons on the order of Chief Police official.
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.174846672658849.55285.100004005531662&type=1&comment_id=577745&notif_t=photo_album_reply
MONYWA and RANGOON—Victims sat or lay down while receiving medical treatment at Monywa Hospital in Sagaing Division after a brutal pre-dawn crackdown by security forces on Thursday.
Faces, ears, hands, legs and backs were brutally burnt after tear gas, water cannons and incendiary devices were reportedly used by riot police with at least 27 monks injured in the resulting blazes. Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is due to visit the scene on Thursday afternoon.
The peaceful protesters were demanding a halt to a Chinese-backed copper mine at the Letpadaung mountain range and did not expect such an aggressive response from the security forces.
A monk called U Theika Nyana who was seriously injured in the raid has been sent to Mandalay Hospital for emergency treatment. Reports circulated that one monk died from his injuries, but The Irrawaddy was unable to independently verify this at the time of publication.
While receiving treatment for severe burns to his face, Buddhist monk U Kawida told The Irrawaddy that he took three hours to reach the hospital from where the crackdown took place. “The fire broke out while we were asleep. We were burnt, but there was no one to help us. The authorities didn’t help us,” said the 25-year-old.
An estimated 100 riot police raided six protest camps near Monywa, some 136 km northwest of Mandalay in Upper Burma, at around 2:30 am after suddenly demanding all protesters leave the area within five minutes.
“They fired tear gas. The fire came from the gas. For about one hour we tried to escape from the flames and we finally reached the hospital in Monywa at 6 am,” said Kawida, another monk receiving treatment.
A hospital employee confirmed that the injured monks arrived in the early hours but declined to elaborate on the condition of patients.
Ye Ying Aung, who witnessed the raid firsthand, said that police and firefighters are now patrolling the scene and all protesters have since fled the area. Some activists including six monks were beaten, arrested and taken away from the protest camp to unknown location, claim local sources.
All six protest camps have now been shut down by the local authorities. Security has also been also beefed up around Monywa Hospital with activists warned that they will be arrested if their protest continues, according to local sources.
The copper mining project is a joint-venture between China’s Wan Bao Company and the Burmese military-owned Union of Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd.
The project has come under pressure since August this year after more than 300 residents from 12 villages in the Letpadaung mountain range staged protests to demand its closure citing environmental destruction, land confiscation and forced relocations.

09 November, 2012

A girl has allegedly been killed for "eyeing a boy." The tragedy occurred when a Pakistani couple accused their 15 year old daughter of dishonoring their family by looking at a boy, and as a punishment threw acid on her.
The murder was a so-called "honor killing" in Pakistan, a country where reports are common about women killed for marrying or having what are deemed inappropriate relationships by their families.
Mohammad Zafar and his wife Zaheen had spoken to the BBC from jail, and explained the killing, which allegedly took place on Oct. 29.
The victim's father has said that his daughter turned to look at a boy who drove past them on a motorbike.
He reportedly fiercely scolded her telling her it was wrong to eye a boy in such a way.
''She said 'I didn't do it on purpose. I won't look again.' By then I had already thrown the acid. It was her destiny to die this way,'' the girl's mother said, according to the BBC.
The father went on to explain that his family had already been reprimanded by the local community because of their older daughter's behavior. It appears as though that experience led them to take a much harsher line with their younger daughter, which ultimately led to her death.
According to Pakistani officials the attack had taken place because the girl had dishonored her family by having an affair with a boy.
In 2011 nearly 1,000 women were murdered in so called "honor killings" in Pakistan, according to the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan. However, that number only includes officially reported cases, and the real number is thought to be much higher.
The HRCP released a report stating: ''Throughout the year, women were callously killed in the name of honor when they went against family wishes in any way, or even on the basis of suspicion that they did so. Women were sometimes killed in the name of honor over property disputes and inheritance rights."

19 August, 2012

The Central Tibetan Administration based in Dharamsala is deeply
disturbed and concerned over the circulation of a misleading photograph
in some section of the media showing Tibetan monks in their reports on the recent violence in Myanmar involving Buddhists and Rohingya Muslims.

07 August, 2012

The international media groups have been unfair to Myanmar and to the Rakkhine victims of the Rohingya attack.
It is obvious that the Rohingyas are the attackers. Why would the majority Rakkhine leave their homes, and get their properties torched if they were the attackers?

We(Myanmar Citizens) would like to ask the international entities who
speak up for Rohingyas. Who would speak up for the Rakkhines whose homes
were ablazed? Who would seek justice for the Rakkhines who were
brutally murdered by the Rohingyas during the Arakan massacred? You
suggested the government of Myanmar of accept the Rohingyas. Were you
there when the Rohingyas raped our women? Were you there when they
splashed kerosene at our homes and burnt them down? Were you there when
they brutally murder our people?

Get up and set your foot on our Arakan land. Hear our cries. Feel our
sorrow. Touch our tears. Touch our blood. See the carcasses. See the
faces. It is for real. None of these are fabricated nor manipulated. The
victims are the Rakkhines, the innocent villagers who were killed by
the Rohingya terrorists. Why did Rohingyas kill the villagers? The
answer is simple. It is because Rohingyas are not one of us, not one of
the ethnic group of Myanmar.